What does First B Jackson teach about perseverance?
Drawn from the messages where it was actually addressed: the words said from the front, the passages taught, and where to hear the whole thing.
At First B Jackson, the teaching on perseverance consistently begins in the same place: God's purposes do not stall when human plans fall apart. In the Acts 27 series, Pastor Ray worked through Paul's fourteen-day storm at sea to show that the opening word of the whole ordeal was that it was decided for Paul, entirely outside his control. Cargo went overboard, the ship's tackle followed, the sun and stars disappeared for the full two weeks, and Luke writes that everyone on board, including himself, abandoned all hope of being saved. Yet an angel came to Paul in the night with a clear word: do not be afraid, because Paul must stand before Caesar, and God has granted him the lives of everyone sailing with him. The Greek word behind "must" carries the same weight it does when Jesus says they must go through Samaria. It is not a suggestion or a possibility. God's purposes move forward, and that certainty is the ground perseverance stands on.
Pastor Chad, working through 2 Timothy 2, pressed the same point from a different angle. Paul's short similes of the soldier, the athlete, and the hardworking farmer are not illustrations of how to earn anything. They are pictures of what it looks like to stay in the fight because someone has already enlisted you, already set the rules, already prepared the ground. Discipline, endurance, and suffering are not signs that the gospel has failed; they are the normal shape of a life in which the gospel is real. Pastor Jason, in Hebrews 12, brought the hardest version of this into the open: if you are in Christ and you are suffering, that suffering is not outside the hand of God. He scourges every son he receives, and a child who receives no discipline is not a son but illegitimate. The Nigerian pastor held captive by Boko Haram, who said he had never been discouraged because all conditions a person finds himself in are in the hand of God, was offered as someone who had already arrived at the rest the passage is pointing toward.
Pastor Carl, in 2 Corinthians 6, gave perseverance its most practical frame. The single Greek preposition running through Paul's list of hardships means you are not just near these things; you are in the middle of them. The phrase he used to hold the passage together was that the only way out is through. Like a pilot in cloud cover who cannot see the horizon and cannot escape the weather, the only option is to trust the instruments and keep moving. The shield of faith and the word of God are those instruments. Paul's list of contrasts, dying yet alive, sorrowful yet always rejoicing, poor yet making many rich, is not a contradiction. It is a description of what it looks like to keep moving through circumstances that have not changed, sustained by a source that does not change either.
Taught from Acts 27 · Hebrews 12:1-11 · 2 Timothy 2:1-13 · 2 Corinthians 6:3-10 · Hebrews 4:1-13
The passage taught · 1 Corinthians 11:23-25
23 For I received from the Lord that which also I delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night in which he was betrayed took bread.
24 When he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “Take, eat. This is my body, which is broken for you. Do this in memory of me.”
25 In the same way he also took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink, in memory of me.”
World English Bible
The messages that teach on it
- October 5, 2025 We Must Run Aground on a Certain Island Paul's storm-tossed voyage to Rome in Acts 27 shows what it looks like to trust God when you've lost control, hit despair, and can't see land.
- January 19, 2020 Wrestle Until You Rest A pastor walks through Hebrews 12:3-11 on God's discipline, exploring how suffering shapes faith and why endurance leads to the peaceful fruit of righteousness.
- August 25, 2019 Let Us Fear, Let Us Be Diligent A study of Hebrews 4 on what it means to enter God's rest, why unbelief leads to disobedience, and how the Word of God searches and shapes the heart.
- January 20, 2019 The Word of God Is Not Imprisoned The pastor walks through 2 Timothy 2, exploring Paul's three soldier, athlete, and farmer similes alongside five trustworthy sayings that anchor the gospel of grace.
- July 12, 2015 Far Be It From Me to Boast Pastor Ray closes out Galatians, covering stewardship, the authenticated gospel, and why Paul boasts only in the cross of Christ, not in law or human effort.
Mentioned along the way
- March 15, 2020 Grace Be With You All Pastor Ray finishes Hebrews with a call to prayer, a Christ-centered benediction, and the simple closing word that holds the whole letter together: grace.
- March 15, 2020 Grace Be With You All Pastor Ray closes Hebrews with a look at prayer, peace, and grace from the letter's final verses, preached during an unusual Sunday as the church gathered online amid COVID-19.
- November 17, 2019 It Is a Terrifying Thing A verse-by-verse walk through Hebrews 10 on the weight of willful sin, the faithfulness of God's promises, and what it means to say yes to Christ as Lord.
- September 22, 2019 Danger, No Passage The pastor walks through Hebrews 6:4-12, holding the warning against falling away and the call to persevere in honest tension, without softening either.
- July 7, 2019 God Has Spoken Through His Son Pastor Ray opens Hebrews with four verses that present Jesus as supreme above prophets, angels, and all creation, the radiance of God's glory and our only source of redemption.
- March 3, 2019 The Lord Stood With Me Paul's final letter names real people who served, strayed, or stayed faithful. A Kenya mission trip shows what those choices look like in our own time.
- March 3, 2019 The Lord Stood With Me Paul closes 2 Timothy with a list of names, and Pastor Ray traces what faithfulness, desertion, and service look like in the lives of real people then and now.
- January 13, 2019 Retain, Guard, Be Strong, Entrust, Suffer Pastor Jonathan preaches through 2 Timothy, drawing on five commands Paul gave Timothy about holding fast to the gospel of grace and enduring hardship for Christ.
- October 18, 2015 The Only Way Out Is Through Paul's appeal in 2 Corinthians 6 calls believers to endure hardships by God's power, trust faith over sight, and widen their hearts to the gospel.